# Metricbeat system.cpu vs system.core

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-system-cpu-vs-system-core/67388>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Created:** [November 28, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-system-cpu-vs-system-core/67388 "2016-11-28T19:00:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bhoskins7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@bhoskins7](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/bhoskins7)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-system-cpu-vs-system-core/67388/1 "2016-11-28T19:00:33Z")

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I am creating Kibana Visualilzations from metricbeat. I was looking at system.cpu fields and system.core fields but these two look very similar other than core includes the [core.id](http://core.id) can someone tell me the difference between the two?

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**Author:** ![andrewkroh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/andrewkroh/32/3784_2.png) [@andrewkroh](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/andrewkroh)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-system-cpu-vs-system-core/67388/2 "2016-11-28T21:15:42Z")

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The [core](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/metricbeat-metricset-system-core.html) metrics contain data about a single core in the system whereas [cpu](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/metricbeat-metricset-system-cpu.html) generates a single event containing data from all cores.

For linux systems it collects data from `/proc/stat`. `cpu` is data from the first line. And `core` reports data from the "cpuN" lines.

```auto
$cat /proc/stat
cpu 256416272 11359 177251594 27397092577 8781725 206 260037 0 0 0
cpu0 37047435 2111 14022460 3425167481 815656 135 115917 0 0 0
cpu1 35111322 664 14731206 3426355399 1029232 42 37767 0 0 0
cpu2 34873089 735 17121937 3424790244 908890 4 25033 0 0 0
cpu3 34588227 3428 19934949 3422239776 790508 24 25785 0 0 0
cpu4 26534520 921 8135438 3446276716 1550756 0 14316 0 0 0
cpu5 33070450 950 59656234 3387617803 2079904 0 15017 0 0 0
cpu6 26293496 479 8624045 3447059364 649905 0 12703 0 0 0
cpu7 28897729 2068 35025323 3417585792 956871 0 13496 0 0 0

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [December 19, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-system-cpu-vs-system-core/67388/3 "2016-12-19T19:00:41Z")

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